Egypt's new population figures released.

Egypt has a population of 72.6 million people according to the figures from the 2006 census released by the government statistics agency in early April. This figure does not include the 3.9 million Egyptians living abroad. The population has grown by two per cent per annum since the last census in 1996, against 2.1 per cent per annum over the previous decade and 2.8 per cent the decade before that. In 1976 the population of Egypt stood at 36.6 million. The population of Cairo is now just over 18 million according to the census results, or roughly a quarter of the total population of Egypt. However, 55 per cent of Egyptians still live in rural areas and following a boom in population movement towards the cities the 1960s and 1970s rural-urban migration is now seemingly on the decline.